‘And as for this book,’ said Hermione, ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard . . . I’ve never even heard of them!’

‘You’ve never heard of The Tales of Beedle the Bard?’ said Ron incredulously. ‘You're kidding, right?’

Taken from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

The Tales of Beedle the Bard played a crucial role in assisting Harry, and his friends Ron and Hermione, in the fight against Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The book contains five tales: ‘The Tale of the Three Brothers’, ‘The Fountain of Fair Fortune’, ‘The Warlock's Hairy Heart’, ‘The Wizard and the Hopping Pot’, and ‘Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump’. Each has its own magical character and will bring delight, laughter and the thrill of mortal peril.

Translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger, the tales are introduced and illustrated by J. K. Rowling. Also included are notes by Professor Albus Dumbledore, which appear by kind permission of the Hogwarts Headmasters’ Archive.The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a book written by British author J. K. Rowling, which was published on December 4, 2008. Issued nearly a year and a half after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it stands as the most recent book published based upon the Harry Potter universe. The book purports to be the storybook of the same name mentioned in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book of the Harry Potter series. The book was originally produced in a limited edition of only seven copies, each handwritten and illustrated by J. K. Rowling.

One of them was offered for auction in late 2007 and was expected to sell for £50,000 (US$103,000, €80,000); ultimately it was bought for £1.95 million ($3.98 million, €2.28 million) by Amazon.com, making the selling price the highest achieved at auction for a modern literary manuscript. The money earned at the auction of the book was donated to The Children's Voice charity campaign. The book was published for the general public on 4 December 2008, with the proceeds going to the Children's High Level Group.

Contents

Publication history

Handmade editions

"The idea came really because I wanted to thank six key people who have been very closely connected to the 'Harry Potter' series, and these were people for whom a piece of jewellery wasn't going to cut it. So I had the idea of writing them a book, a handwritten and illustrated book, just for these six people. And well, if I'm doing six I really have to do seven, and the seventh book will be for this cause, which is so close to my heart."

Originally, The Tales of Beedle the Bard had only been produced in a limited number of seven handmade copies, all handwritten and illustrated by the author herself. The books were bound in brown morocco leather, and decorated with hand-chased silver ornaments and mounted semiprecious stones by silversmith and jeweller Hamilton & Inches of Edinburgh. Each of the silver pieces represents one of the five stories in the book. Rowling also asked that each of the seven copies be embellished using a different semiprecious stone. Six of these original handwritten copies were uniquely dedicated and given by Rowling to six people who were most involved with the Harry Potter series.

The recipients of these copies were not initially identified. Since then, two of these people have been named. One is Barry Cunningham, Rowling's very first editor. Another is Arthur A. Levine, editor for Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter books. Cunningham and Levine had lent their personal copies as part of Beedle the Bard exhibits in December 2008. Rowling also decided to create a seventh handwritten copy (distinguished from the others by its moonstone jewelling) to sell at auction in order to raise funds for The Children's Voice charity campaign.

The handmade edition was meant to be a copy of the in-universe book The Tales of Beedle the Bard. (However, it would not be a copy of the book Albus Dumbledore left to Hermione Granger, as that one was written in ancient runes). The fictional background of this book is that it is supposedly a version edited and translated by Hermione Granger, including commentary written by Albus Dumbledore as part of a project left unfinished by his death.

Moonstone Edition

The "Moonstone edition" of The Tales of Beedle the Bard

The 157-page "Moonstone edition" of the book was first put on display prior to bidding on 26 November in New York and on 9 December in London. The book was auctioned 13 December 2007, at Sotheby's in London. The starting price was £30,000 ($62,000, €46,000), and originally it was expected to sell for approximately £50,000 ($103,000, €80,000). The closing bid far exceeded all prior projections, as ultimately the book was purchased by a representative from London fine art dealers Hazlitt Gooden and Fox on behalf of Amazon, for a total of £1.95 million ($3.98 million, €2.28 million).

This was the highest purchase price for a modern literary manuscript at that date. The money earned at auction later was donated by Rowling to The Children's Voice charity campaign. Sotheby's printed a forty-eight page promotional catalogue for the auction. The catalogue featured illustrations from the book, as well as comments from J. K. Rowling on The Tales of Beedle the Bard. The catalogue was sold as a collector's item, and the money from the sales also has been donated to The Children's Voice.

General public

American cover of the public release of The Tales of Beedle the Bard

On 31 July 2008, it was announced The Tales of Beedle the Bard would also be made available for the public, in both standard and collector's editions. The book was published by Children's High Level Group and printed and distributed by Bloomsbury, Scholastic, and Amazon.com. The decision was taken due to disappointment among Harry Potter fans after it had initially been announced a wide public release was not intended.

The standard edition also includes illustrations reproduced from the handwritten edition auctioned in December 2007, and the introduction by the author. The limited collector's edition features ten illustrations by J. K. Rowling not included in the standard edition or the original handcrafted edition, as well as an exclusive reproduction of J. K. Rowling's handwritten introduction, and other miscellaneous objects such as replica gemstones and an emerald ribbon.

The book, released on 4 December 2008, was published in the United Kingdom and Canada by Bloomsbury, while the US edition was published by Scholastic, and the limited collector's edition of the book, available in all three countries, by Amazon. The limited edition retailed for £50 ($100, €100), and around 100,000 copies have been printed. The book has been translated into 28 languages. Profits from the sale of the book were offered to the Children's High Level Group. Initial sale estimates were roughly £4 million ($7.6 million, €4.7 million); as of January 2010 an estimated £11 million ($17 million, €13 million) were generated from sales for the charity.

"The Wizard and the Hopping Pot"

This story is about the legacy of an old man who, in his generosity, used his pot to brew magical potions and antidotes for other people when they needed his help. Upon his death, he leaves all his belongings to his only son, who has none of the virtues his father had. After his father's death, the son finds the pot and a single slipper inside it together with a note from his father that reads, "In the fond hope, my son, that you will never need it".

Bitter for having nothing left but a pot, the son closes the door on every person who asks for his help. Each time he does so, the pot takes on the symptoms of the ones who ask for help, it starts disturbing the son and prevents him from having any peace of mind. This continues until the son finally gives up and provides aid to the town. Upon doing this, the pot's ailments are removed one by one and the son's ordeal finally ends one day when the slipper he received from his father falls out of the pot; he puts the slipper on the pot's foot and the two walk off into the sunset.

"The Fountain of Fair Fortune"

In this story, there is a fountain where once per year between the hours of sunrise and sunset on the longest day, one person may bathe to have his or her problems answered. This is how three witches meet. The first witch, Asha, suffers from a disease. The second, Altheda, endures poverty and powerlessness due to a robbery by an evil sorcerer. The third, Amata, is distraught after being left by her beloved. The three witches decide to try to reach the fountain together but along the way, a knight also joins them.

On their path to the fountain, they face three challenges. The first involves a giant worm that demands "proof of [their] pain". To pass the first challenge Asha used her tears to satisfy the worm. The second, a steep slope where they have to bring the "fruit of their labours". For the second challenge Altheda uses her sweat to move upward. The third challenge, crossing a river, requires them to pay with "the treasure of [their] past". Amata passes the challenge by using magic to withdraw the memories of her ex-lover and drop them into the water.

At the fountain, Asha collapses from exhaustion. To save her, Altheda brews an invigorating potion that also cures Asha of her disease and need of the fountain. Altheda realises that her skills are a means to earn money, so she also no longer needs the fountain. Amata realises that washing away her regret for her lover removed her need as well. The knight bathes in the water, after which he flings himself at Amata's feet and asks for "her hand and her heart" which she happily gives. Everyone gets an answer to his or her problem, unaware that the fountain held no magical power at all.

"The Warlock's Hairy Heart"

The story is about a young and handsome warlock who decides to never fall in love, so he uses Dark Arts to prevent himself from doing so. His family, hoping he will change, does nothing. However, one day, he hears two servants whispering about him not having a wife, so he decides to find a talented, rich, and beautiful witch and marry her to gain everyone's envy.

He meets that girl the next day. Though the girl is both "fascinated and repelled", the warlock persuades her to come to a dinner feast at his castle. During the feast, she tells him that she needs to know he has a heart. The warlock shows her his beating hairy heart inside a crystal casket in his dungeon. The witch begs him to put it back inside himself. After the warlock does so, she embraces him. However, being disconnected from its body for so long, his heart has developed savage tastes as it has degenerated into an animalistic state. And so he is driven to take by force a truly human heart. He tears out the witch's heart to replace his own, but finding that he cannot magic the hairy heart back out of his chest, he cuts it out with a dagger. Thus he and the maiden both die, with him holding both hearts in his hands.

"Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump"

This story is about a king who wants to keep all magic to himself. To do this he needs to solve two problems: he must capture and imprison all of the sorcerers in the kingdom and he has to learn magic. He creates a "Brigade of Witch Hunters" and calls for an instructor in magic. Only a "cunning charlatan" with no magical ability responds. The charlatan proves himself with a few simple tricks and begins to ask for jewellery and money to continue teaching.

However, Babbitty, the king's washerwoman, laughs at the king one day as he attempts to do magic with an ordinary twig. This causes the king to demand the charlatan join him in a public demonstration of magic and warns that the charlatan will be beheaded if anyone laughs. The charlatan later witnesses Babbitty performing magic in her house. He threatens to expose her if she does not assist him. She agrees to hide and help the demonstration.

During the performance, the brigade captain asks the king to bring his dead hound back to life. Because Babbitty's magic is unable to raise the dead, the crowd thinks the previous acts were tricks. The charlatan exposes Babbitty, accusing her of blocking the spells. Babbitty flees into a forest and disappears at the base of an old tree. In desperation, the charlatan states that she has turned "into a tree" and has the tree cut down.

As the crowd departs, the stump starts cackling and makes the charlatan confess. The stump cackles again, demanding the king never hurt a wizard again, and build a statue of Babbitty on the stump out of solid gold to remind him of his foolishness. The king agrees and heads back to the palace. Afterwards, a "stout old rabbit" with a wand in its teeth hops out from a hole beneath the stump and leaves the kingdom.

"The Tale of the Three Brothers"

The story is about three brothers who, travelling together, reach a treacherous river. Being wizards, they make a magical bridge over the river. Halfway across the bridge, they meet the personification of Death who is angry for losing three potential victims of the river. He pretends to be impressed by them and grants each a wish as a reward. The eldest brother asks for an unbeatable wand, so Death carves the Elder Wand from a nearby tree. The middle brother asks for the ability to call back the dead, so Death gives him a stone from the river called the Resurrection Stone. The youngest brother doesn't trust Death and asks for a way to stop Death from following him, so Death reluctantly gives him his Cloak of Invisibility. Afterwards, the brothers go their separate ways.

The eldest brother, bragging about his powerful wand, is robbed of it by a man and murdered while he is asleep. The middle brother uses his ability to bring back the woman he loved, who died before he could marry her. However, she is not fully alive and is full of sorrow. He kills himself to join her. So death takes the first two brothers for his own. As for the youngest brother, Death never manages to find him, as he stays hidden under his Cloak. Many years later, the brother removes his cloak and gives it to his son. Pleased with his achievements, he greets Death as an old friend and chooses to leave with him as equals.

Behind the scenes

The American edition of this book is the only time where the Philosopher's Stone isn't referred to as "the Sorcerer's Stone" in the American editions of the Harry Potter books (It is referred to as such on page 99). Whether this was intentional or an oversight by the editors is unknown.